Challenging Technology Expertise

• In Event: 50462 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 11: Boundary Work

Abstract

This Article challenges a defining feature of law and technology scholarship and policy—namely, the assumption that technology expertise is necessary for technology policymaking.

The assumption that making law about advanced, data-driven technologies like automated, algorithmically-driven processes often described as artificial intelligence (AI) requires knowledge of and experience with how underlying technologies work is repeated so often that many take it for granted. But in adopting this assumption, many scholars and policymakers have failed to sufficiently think through the underlying rationales, and their associated logics and pathologies, for what is, at its core, a political decision to value some voices and accompanying policy approaches over others.

This Article uncovers the mostly implicit rationales for integrating tech expertise into tech policymaking. It identifies three interrelated rationales: the unique nature of digital technologies, the capability of technology expertise to enable governance of those technologies, and the affinities between certain technology and legal values. It demonstrates that all of the arguments are based on faulty premises, contain fatal logical flaws, and lead to policies that privilege deregulatory agendas and put vulnerable populations at risk.

The Article then proposes an alternative. The conventional wisdom has it exactly backwards. By arguing that technology expertise is necessary to make policy, the standard account implies that expertise logically precedes policy. It does not. Ex ante policy choices can and should define the role of tech expertise. Therefore, this Article turns the tech policy debate on its head. In some cases, that may mean that technology expertise plays no role; in other cases, it may mean tech expertise makes enforcement possible. In all cases, the role of technology expertise should be bounded and, importantly, reasoned.

Author

• Ari Ezra Waldman, University of California, Irvine